Friday, August 11, 2017

Just came home from Scott's where we watched Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle.

She won an Oscar for her performance as a tough Irish woman. She beat our Joan Fontaine in Rebecca, Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, and Bette Davis in something, our host Ben Mankiewicz told us.

Ben, speak to us please.

I get various info from different sources. Newsworks is from WHYY. Read a fascinating story which I emailed to my support group.

Read it here. We hope it's still up. Actually it was reprinted on another website, which I may feature.

I titled it Suicidal Man Writes About His Experiences as an Inpatient.

Here's what I wrote my group:

***Hi everyone,

Interesting article about a suicidal
young man in the Philadelphia area
who signed himself into a local
hospital and the treatment he
received there, both compassionate
and otherwise.

He's now in med school at Temple
University.

Read the story here. He also wrote a similar story on something called MEDIUM. com.

A dozen years ago when I spoke to
interns about bipolar d/o at
Jefferson Hospital downtown, there
were a couple of bipolar students.

Why not? We know the illness the
best. And we have the capacity to
take meds and become stabilized.

At ND, we've received fairly good
reports about inpatient
hospitalization at Horsham Clinic.

Anywhere else you're familiar with?

I invited the fellow, whose name I
forget, to speak at one of our
Willow Grove Giant Community Events.

Will let you know if I hear from
him.

***

Did hear from him - Max Ellithorpe - and he's too busy to speak. When he wrote me back he referred to my REMISSION from bipolar disorder. I haven't had an episode in SIX YEARS and take no meds.

***

Dear Reader, if you could eat anything right now you wanted, what would it be.

I pause for only a moment. I think previously I told you the best DQ I ever had was a toffee, chocolate chip chunk, salted caramel. Can't show you a pic as it would take five minutes to get back here.

I'd eat a big fat slice of juicy ripe tomato, covered with a slice of mozzarella cheese and a leaf or two of basil.

My friend Evelyn taught me about the basil. She came out when Simon lived here with a bag of goodies. Can't remember Evelyn's last name. She's doing quite well in her mid 80s, living downtown in a co-op.

She and I used to write for Art Matters.

Kobler.

Yes, I am wasting time.

I lost a quarter of what I'd originally printed and now I've got to reproduce it.

Once or twice a day I go out and water our crops. They're behind a huge fortified fence so the critters don't get inside. I wrote a lovely poem about this, which I'll try to reproduce. No, I'll just write anudder one.

FROM BEHIND THE HEAVY FENCE

Green hose in hand, I stand outside the
finely netted fence and water the
literally hundreds of tomatoes,
fat ones, swaying happily, and
tiny ones, all trusting their maker,
whomever that may be, to
care for them on this small
spit of land in a place we call
Pennsylvania.

When done, I slip the hose on
its cradle behind the spent
beardless iris, and look once
again at a horrible sight.

Atop the cradle, a spider has
woven his web. A big black
ant is caught there. Stuck.
Is he alive? In pain? Sentient,
we hope, he is not.

***

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going downstairs to watch Part Four of Missing Persons, or some name like that, which I picked up tonight at the library.